[jazz piano music]
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- Ultimately I came to the conclusion
that all I must do is take care of the music.
Even if I do it in a closet. - Mm-hmm.
- See, and if I really do that,
somebody's gonna come and open the door of the closet
and say, "Hey, we're looking for you," you know?
[jazz piano tunes]
- People are interested in who he was.
What was he like?
Damned if I know, really,
but all the information
that's really important is in the music.
- He had such a great sound from the piano
of his own sound, okay?
And it was pretty.
It was pretty, and deep,
and he was able to get through the piano
how he felt, I believe.
I mean, that's what we all strive for.
- The most powerful thing that he taught me
was to search only for truth and beauty.
- That was Bill.
He knew his destination,
and it was jazz,
and there were gonna be no detours.
[jazz piano music]
- Go by bus, by plane, by car, by train.
Go!
[imitating drums and cymbals]
New York, New York.
A city so nice they had to name it twice.
[chuckling]
- New York, New York,
what they call a somethin' else town.
Yeah, if you can't make it in New York City, man,
you can't make it nowhere.
So where do people come to scuffle?
Right here.
[jazz music]
- It was either late 1954
or early 1955, somebody told me
that Jerry Wald was holding auditions.
So I figured I'd go over there and see if I could get the gig.
And when I got there, Bill Evans was playing piano.
He was auditioning, and I overheard somebody say,
"That's Bill Evans.
"He's from Plainfield, New Jersey.
He's supposed to be really good."
And I started listening and I said, "Wow, he is.
He's great. I really like."
I said, "I hope I get the gig,
and I hope he gets the gig. I'd like to play with him."
And so it happened.
He got the gig, and I got the gig,
and that's when we met.
[upbeat jazz piano]
- My first year in New York,
I'm living in a $75 a month apartment.
I'm working three nights a week way out in Brooklyn,
which required, like, three subway trains,
working three nights out there playing society music for $55.
I was in my little apartment on 83rd Street,
just big enough for my piano and bed, you know,
just woodshedding in that apartment.
I think those were the most productive
three or four years of my life.
- Yeah, that was his pad,
and the piano was right over here,
and that's the window.
He's looking out onto West End Avenue.
And it was a mess.
The kitchen was piled with newspapers up to the ceiling,
and there was a path to the sink and the refrigerator.
- We became really close friends, man.
I was--you know, we used to hang out a lot together.
We played with Tony Scott, clarinet player.
[jazz clarinet music]
- Tony Scott really admired what Bill did.
Anywhere he wanted to go, he said, "Go ahead," you know,
and Bill said, "I got you," you know?
[jazz piano music]
- I want to build my music from the bottom up,
piece by piece.
And I just have a reason
that I arrived at myself for every note I play.
- I never heard him make a harmonic mistake.
Never.
Not one wrong note.
- Bill could play anything, man.
He would--you could put any kind of music in front of him.
He could read that-- classical music or whatever.
I mean, he'd play the shit out of it, man.
I mean, he was playing piano
since he was four or five years old.
[slow jazz piano]
- My brother was two years older.
He started piano before I did.
- Dad was playing, and Bill would be under the piano,
so fascinated with the sound.
He was lost in music as a child.
[bombastic classical music]
Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky.
I can't ever remember anybody that was not Russian,
you know, on the phonograph.
- My mother was raised in the Russian church.
When we had dinner, they would sing,
you know, a lot of Russian music.
At one point, my mother bought us stacks of old music.
[classical piano music]
But after dinner every night,
I would sit with the stack of old music,
and I would go through it,
and whatever I couldn't read I'd put aside for later.
And by the time I was nine, I was quite a good sight reader.
[jazz piano music]
- Bill loved Harry, and Harry admired Bill.
They were close. They really were close brothers.
- My dad was like, "You'll come through me before you dare,
dare bully my brother."
- My brother made me very aggressive,
and I wouldn't take no shit from nobody
because he used to pound on me, and we'd scrap.
- They must've had some hard times with their parents.
My grandfather was a drinker.
He was very cruel to my grandmother.
It was like they could kind of hold each other
when their parents couldn't.
- When I think about it now,
I don't know what kind of a person
I would've been or whether-- if it hadn't been for him.
[rapid jazz piano]
I just got all very excited about jazz when I was about 13,
and then I started to hear jazz.
There was Earl Hines.
And Nat Cole to me was a major jazz pianist.
[jazz saxophone]
Besides all the arrangers and horn players
and people that you could mention,
you know, hundreds.
[jazz brass music]
I got into a high school rehearsal band,
and so I was playing jazz practically from the beginning,
and I was 13, 14, you know, 15.
[Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing"]
- In those days, it was the middle of the war,
basically, and my father was looking for good players
to round out his band.
- There's Bill Evans. Myself--that's Connie Atkinson.
- I learned mostly on the job, you know,
and then I started to learn about changes
and harmonics and what--
how a tune was built harmonically.
["Tuxedo Junction" playing]
- I remember the first time we were playing "Tuxedo Junction,"
and I remember just putting in a little blues sound,
and it was such a thrill to do something of my own
that was not written.
- He worked like crazy.
Bill would have at least an hour and a half of practicing
before he went to high school,
and he played all the time.
- The next train will be stopping at Netherwood,
Fanwood, Westfield, Cranford, Roselle...
[train bell sounding]
[slow jazz piano]
- What it really is, is a endless kind of dues.
The whole thing of working three or four nights
through high school, waiting for trains late at night
in lonely stations, you know.
[train whistle blaring]
[jazz music]
When I started playing with older musicians
in central Jersey,
a band led by a man named Buddy Valentino.
- Bill Evans played with Buddy Valentino...
- Right. - And that's--
I met him over there.
- Russ Locandro, a saxophone player,
got a little job
at a place called the Idle Hour
in West Point Pleasant, New Jersey.
- Just the three of us-- Bill and Connie and myself.
Bill's piano was very, very tasty.
In fact, those arrangements on there were mostly his ideas.
I may be wrong.
[jazz piano music]
Tasty.
[snapping fingers]
- He's already getting his voice.
Very, very rhythmic, the phrasing.
[classical piano music]
- The main feature at Southeastern was the classics.
Bill played Gershwin,
Rachmaninov, Villa-Lobos.
He played with such ease.
There was an expressive, natural expressiveness there.
- Bill used to play--
get up in the morning and play the piano.
[jazz piano music]
He'd get in that practice room in the music building,
and he'd play for hours.
- I used to hear him all the time.
He would walk down the hall and knock on the door,
and he'd say, "Bring your brushes."
Well, and I'd scramble and get my brushes and follow him.
He would go sit in a room,
and he'd just cook, man. That was...
[upbeat jazz piano]
- When he went to Southeastern, he went down there
to really work on his jazz.
- There was a piano teacher here, Gretchen McGee,
and she taught us music theory.
- Gretchen McGee, she was, you know, really a good teacher.
I owe a great deal to her.
- Harry went down to Southeastern,
and while Bill was just such a great scholar,
Harry really wanted to have fun, you know what I'm saying?
And really slept through the classes most of the time.
They were as different as night and day.
Bill, tall, so introverted.
Harry, short and convivial and outgoing.
- Bill was clean-cut, handsome.
Even with glasses, he was a very nice-looking young man.
- Bill was a good guy, and the girls loved him.
- The last two years I was here were perhaps--
I think without a doubt the happiest years of my life.
Jazz is the most central and important thing in my life.
[jazz piano music]
Then I moved to New York, got an apartment.
At that time, I made a pact with myself.
I mean, if the world didn't show me
that, you know, somehow--
- Something was happening, yeah.
- So I gave myself till I was 30.
[jazz music]
- Let's welcome Miles Davis and the Quintet.
[cheers and applause]
- Ladies and gentlemen,
how about a big hand there for Art Blakey?
Thank y'all!
[upbeat jazz music]
- He caught Miles at Birdland,
or played here in Birdland,
the Half Note with the Five Spot.
I think I heard him out there for the first time.
Sonny Clark.
[jazz piano music]
John Coltrane.
[smooth jazz saxophone]
All of these guys, what they were putting out
was so much the life force.
They had tapped it.
They told me the truth. They showed me the truth.
They played their truth.
[rapid jazz piano]
- I grew up in the era of hard bop,
and my first real hero piano player was Horace Silver.
- Horace Silver's solo on "Soft Winds."
- I loved Bud Powell.
- Bud Powell comes in, and he's just blazing.
- It didn't matter much how much he could play like Bud Powell.
You know, finally he had to play like Bill Evans.
- At the time, Tony Scott and I were rooming together,
so Bill showed up, and Bill was playing,
and I pushed the record button on this wire recorder,
and it turned out to be pretty good,
and I thought, "I wonder if Orrin Keepnews
would be interested in Bill Evans."
- Mundell had a demo tape,
which he played over the telephone.
So that was the first time I ever heard Bill Evans.
[upbeat jazz music]
Bill was working at some of these small downtown clubs,
and I stopped into some of these places
and started to listen to Mr. Evans.
- He was--he was--
he was really spanking the piano.
I mean, he was really being heard and playing.
- And it seems like he was someplace
between maybe Bud Powell and Lennie Tristano.
Between bebop, but extending it a bit.
- He was an up-and-coming young guy that, you know, say,
"Hey, that's a good piano. Get him."
You know, that kind of stuff.
- We played with Don Elliott,
who played a mellophone and vibraphone.
Tony Scott--there's a record,
a Tony Scott record that I'm on with Bill Evans.
That's, like, strictly 4/4 time, swing.
- Right, right. - Swingin' like a motherfucker.
[jazz music]
And then, I guess he got the offer to make a recording
for Riverside Records at the time,
and he asked me to do it,
and the bass player was Teddy Kotick at that time.
- That trio album was critically very well-received,
but our total sales in the first year
was 800 copies.
About a year after the first record came out,
Miles Davis became aware of him.
- Miles was about the music, first and foremost,
and he was really passionate about--
to him, he was serious about that.
I loved him for that.
- Miles in the 1950s was fast becoming the guy
who was bearing a standard for jazz in general.
[jazz trumpet music]
What he was doing, album by album,
year by year, you know,
who was in his group was a very important thing.
- I loved the music
'cause it was absolutely wild.
[laughs]
It was incredible.
Miles would play this way
and then that way,
and Trane would play everything Miles played.
Even play it backwards.
And, you know, Red Garland.
And Paul is...
You know, Joe is--bam!
[imitating drums]
And Miles would be at the bar flirting with some chick, yeah.
- And then in 1957, he starts to kind of tinker with it
and take it apart.
He's been after this alto player, Cannonball Adderley,
gets him in the group.
And he's got a new drummer named Jimmy Cobb,
and Red starts not showing up in gigs.
- And I was in my little apartment on 83rd Street.
The phone rang one day,
and it was Miles on the other end,
saying could I make a weekend
in Philadelphia with him at Pep's?
Well, of course, you know, I was thrilled.
- When they hired Bill, that was big news.
You know, that was something.
[jazz music]
- Miles, I think, was when Bill kind of popped his cherry
as far as getting on the road.
- We just, you know, started the traveling tour.
It was a monstrous challenge.
This was an all-black band.
- Miles Davis All Stars
coming to you live from the Spotlight.
- I was living right around the corner from the Spotlight,
and he was telling me that it was really tough in Detroit.
- We played black clubs.
I got a lot of, you know, vibes, like, silent treatment,
you know, not-so-silent treatment.
"What's that white cat doing up there?"
Kind of thing, you know?
- And people like Cannon and Paul Chambers
and whatnot would have to turn and say,
"He's up there because Miles wants him up there."
[slow jazz piano]
- He gave Miles a sleekness
and elegance again.
It is elegant.
- I think if you go to two tracks,
"Stella by Starlight"
and "On Green Dolphin Street,"
you start to feel the elegance
that they're gonna be shooting for in "Kind of Blue."
[jazz music]
- You know, Miles was so sensitive to subtleties.
I learned a lot from just, you know, listening to him.
- Miles was like a witch doctor.
He daunts you, you know?
He pushes you as far as he can, you know?
- This was a very heavy black pride band at that time,
and Miles, he, you know,
called me a white, you know, piano player.
[jazz piano music]
- Most of the guys then were playing
some kind of macho bebop stuff,
and Bill had the courage
and the background
to really open up the piano
and listen really carefully
and just play gorgeous chord voicings
and that sort of things.
And Bob Brookmeyer, Jim Giuffre,
and I worked at the Cafe Bohemia,
and Bill was working with Miles Davis' group.
- Miles Davis playing for you from the Cafe Bohemia.
- One Sunday, we came in,
and we couldn't get Bill to get on the bandstand.
He was sitting in the corner.
"No, I can't play good. I can't do this."
"Come on, Bill, get your ass up there," you know?
"Oh, I can't," you know?
[jazz piano music]
He didn't always feel that he was a great piano player.
- So you want to be able
to deal with the work,
but not feel the pain?
Heroin is particularly well-suited to that.
- There was this nice,
obviously very talented,
very funny kid,
and then almost imperceptibly he became a junkie.
- I asked Bill about that.
I said, "You get started on smack, man?
It was a dumb thing to do." He says, "Yeah, I know."
He said, "The first time I took smack, I didn't rush.
"I just stayed right there.
There's no voices going off in your head."
- I remember seeing him.
He was walking south on 7th Avenue,
and I was not going to go over.
I knew he would hit me up for money.
- It was no longer just a shirt and tie
when I met him, you know?
Everything was serving the beast, you know?
I hated to see that, you know?
- I think what I really got from the experience with Miles
was returning more confidently to my own identity
and realizing that I had to really be myself.
- The subject is...jazz.
- And Bill was playing "Billy the Kid,"
which he had just recorded.
Bill was just beginning to have his problems.
We talked.
As a matter of fact, he began to date my assistant.
- I met Peri here in New York.
She was very cool, very cool.
She knew everything about jazz, everything.
- Peri was great.
Peri was a wonderful woman.
- Peri was very much in love with Bill.
That is a fact.
- She wanted to get married with Bill.
I thought she was great for him.
She loved him, man.
- I got fascinated with jazz,
and I heard Bill on record,
and it just totally transformed my life.
- One of my favorite Bill Evans records is "Everybody Digs."
- Bill's second album: "Everybody Digs Bill Evans."
It was clear to me and all my friends
that this was the piano player.
- You know, when he's playing that "I'm So Lucky to Be Me,"
I thought, "My God, this is
the most beautiful music I've ever heard."
He's just so connected to his heart.
- People think technique is playing fast,
and Bill could do that.
But technique is also being able to play beautifully slowly,
and Bill could do that.
- It goes--
[singing] Bom, bom
Chord, chord.
[soft jazz piano]
And the piece starts to unfold.
He just draws you along as he tells this
increasingly complicated
and tension-building story.
And he strings you out until you are about to break
and then resolves it and moves it back in again.
- And you listen to that-- man, it's so damn beautiful,
man, it'd make you want to cry.
- Somehow Bill just spoke to me in a way
that I hadn't heard anybody talking.
[upbeat jazz music]
- One of the stories that comes out of "Kind of Blue"
is this two brothers exploring music together.
That is the Miles Davis, Bill Evans story.
- I was with Miles for a good part of '58,
and he called me to do that album,
which happened about three or four months
after I left the band.
- Bill and Miles decide in early '59,
we're gonna explore this idea of modal jazz,
staying on one scale for a long period of time.
That sort of sets the stage for "Kind of Blue."
- "Kind of Blue" was 1959, and that's what was going,
that's what was going on, baby.
It was Jack Kerouac and Lenny Bruce,
and everybody was hip and cool,
and, you know, and "Kind of Blue" was--
especially with "So What," it was kind of like--
[snaps fingers]
This kind of thing,
because they weren't in a hurry.
They were relaxed.
They were loose, you know?
[jazz piano melody]
- "Kind of Blue" is its own thing.
You really hear the individual spirit
of Cannonball Adderley,
John Coltrane, Miles,
and of course Bill Evans.
[Miles Davis' "So What"]
- Miles was one of the few jazz soloists
who listens to his accompaniment,
and there's almost a feeling of a dialogue,
and it's a marvelous quality.
[jazz saxophone solo]
- When you listen to "So What,"
and Cannonball comes in, he does his thing,
and he's right straight down the line.
And then Trane's doing his thing with the sheets of sound,
and then here comes Bill Evans.
[jazz piano music]
Mostly chorus.
With Bill Evans, Miles heard something.
You know, Miles, he heard something in Trane,
and he knew how to put those elements together.
Miles Davis was a genius.
"Flamenco Sketches"-- you know, the root of that
is "Peace Piece," Bill Evans' "Peace Piece," just kind of--
- If you're gonna do Bill Evans' greatest moments,
his solos--all of his solos
on "Kind of Blue" would have to be on there.
- It is elegant.
"Blue in Green" is an exercise in elegance.
- Bill wrote much of the material,
even though it's credited to Miles.
- He was over to see Miles.
They were planning the session,
and Miles gave him two chord changes,
and Miles said, "What would you do with that?"
And Bill said, "I went home, and I wrote 'Blue in Green.'"
- "Kind of Blue" is the result of two musical architects:
Miles Davis and Bill Evans.
- When you listen to Miles and Bill Evans playing together,
this was a marriage made in heaven.
It was just, like, so right.
It was so perfect.
- It's a masterpiece.
It's a masterpiece.
- The unforgettable experience of playing
with these fantastic musicians.
I'm very thankful about it.
- Of all the relationships he had with women,
probably the one I knew the best was Ellaine.
- He said he was on mescaline, and he looked across the room,
and this lady just went like-- [exclaims]
Like this, and that was Ellaine,
and it was love at first sight.
- She was small. She was dark.
She was Jewish.
- Nervous energy, always smoking.
- She was a very sweet girl.
Very nice, very intelligent.
- They hit it off, and, you know,
they started living together and stuff.
- I think Bill and Ellaine had a very, very deep relationship.
You know, I think he loved her a lot,
and I think she loved him a lot,
but at the same token, what came first?
The music.
- Bill's career path continues.
He sets up his first great trio.
Paul Motian on drums.
Scotty LaFaro on bass.
- In my first meeting with Scott,
I heard this tremendous talent
that was bubbling over.
Everything was bubbling out,
and this was a very unique and exceptional talent.
- Scotty was just really hanging out at the Lighthouse,
just going out to clubs and sitting in.
[upbeat jazz music]
- Somebody told me about him, and they said
he's playing down at the Hermosa Beach Lighthouse.
And so I wanted to check the guy out.
[jazz bass music]
It was like, "Who is this guy?"
- Scotty used to play with three fingers.
I mean, he played the bass sort of almost like a guitar.
Nobody played the bass like Scotty.
Just didn't exist.
- And he played with Monk,
and he played with Victor Feldman,
and he'd studied Sonny Rollins' music, and so--
[whistles]
He was brilliant,
just brilliant.
- He would get up in the morning,
and he would pick up the bass.
He would start, like, at 9:30.
I would say, "Can't we do something else in the mornings
other than you picking up the bass?"
He goes, "What? What can we do?"
And I said, "We could go to bed."
[laughing] You know?
- I mean, he never had the bass out of his hand.
He would practice all day long.
- Bill, he had a gig at Basin Street,
and Scott LaFaro sat in when I was playing with Bill,
and that shit really clicked, really clicked.
[jazz music]
And so then that became a trio.
- Bill Evans, everybody.
Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro, Paul Motian.
- We played in Birdland opposite Count Basie Big Band, man.
I mean, that place was packed.
It was like a madhouse.
We knew what we were doing, man, and we were having a ball.
- That's all they wanted to do, those guys.
They wanted to just play.
- Well, you hear Scott with other groups.
He sounds good.
You hear Scott with Bill Evans and Paul Motian.
Then he sounds amazing.
- Bill and Scotty, they had-- they just had a thing
where they had this kind of interaction
where there was really a real communication
between the piano and the bass.
Before that, it was trios.
It was a piano player with bass and drum accompaniment.
This thing was like three people
making, like, one instrument.
- Almost a collective dialogue.
- But Paul kept it all together.
Paul was wonderful.
- Our first record-- that is,
the "Portrait in Jazz" on Riverside,
you hear a type of interplay and things which we discovered.
- "Portraits," where we play "Witchcraft"
and "Autumn Leaves"-- that's great.
I love that record.
- Scotty thought Bill was absolutely brilliant.
You know, they had a special relationship.
They, you know, started discussing Eastern philosophies.
- Scott was always at a high pitch of intensity.
He was a constant inspiration to me.
- Bill was doing some drugs
when we were playing with Scott LaFaro.
- Bill and his old lady lived up on West End Avenue.
And it was kind of in the wintertime,
and the landlord put all their furniture
out on the sidewalk.
Everything was chaotic.
They didn't know where they were gonna go,
didn't have any money and, you know, that kind of scene.
- Bill was screwing up, you know,
with the drugs and stuff,
and Scotty didn't understand it.
- One night, he really put Bill down, man.
He said, "You ought to go and look in the mirror, man."
He said, "What the fuck are you doing, man?"
He said, "You were playing great."
He said, "Now"-- he said,
"You aren't playing good at all."
So I mean, he let him know. You know, he would say it.
- Bill was just so strung out those days.
As much as he wanted to quit...
He couldn't.
He had inner demons.
[jazz music]
- The "Explorations" album, for instance,
I wasn't gonna release.
We had a very, very bad feeling
within the group that night for reasons
which I won't bother to explain.
- "My Haunted Heart," that's an amazing song.
The way Scott--
Scott can break your heart with notes he's playing,
and it's just amazing.
- And "Explorations" is just like a seminal record,
not just for Bill Evans but in jazz.
You listen to "Elsa" and "Israel"
and "Sweet and Lovely."
That record is just--mwah.
- Sunday afternoon
and Sunday night of the final day
of a Bill Evans Trio engagement
at the Village Vanguard was completely recorded.
- It's the first actual records I bought, you know,
in vinyl 12-inch discs.
"Waltz for Debbie," "Sunday at the Vanguard."
And I heard on "Sunday at the Vanguard,"
and just from the downbeat, you know,
the air in the club and everything
and just fell in love with it.
[soft jazz music]
- I remember sitting in the back, be hanging there.
Scotty would be there, Paul,
and Bill would be sitting there usually,
and he had this little book,
a little music book, and I remember him--
he'd be writing down the changes to some tune
that he wanted to play or something, you know?
- "Waltz for Debby." That says it.
Here's a man who, early in his career,
just reached and came out with a gem like this.
This is a gorgeous piece of music.
- It was a feeling that came across.
The treatment of those pieces,
they were really playing for each other.
- People listen to those records,
and they see how good everything was,
but if you didn't hear it live...
[laughs]
Listen, you can't-- there's no comparison, man.
If you were sitting here when we were playing,
you'd really get it.
You'd get a message.
[laughing]
- No matter what he did before that and after that,
the Vanguard sessions, you know,
they'll be still out there before everything falls away.
They'll still be there, yeah.
[applause]
[jazz music]
- There was the Sunday night after the session,
the recording session, the end of the gig.
I'm packing up the drums,
and I said to Bill and Scott,
I said, "Hey, man, let's work more.
Let's--we can do more."
You know, we could be-- and they both agreed.
They said, "Yeah, this--
everything's really clicking now."
- They were so wired from that evening, people talking,
rapping, doing everything.
Scotty was just thrilled.
So was Bill.
- Whoever knew that that day would be such an important day?
- That day was the last time
that these two guys played together.
- And then, like, a couple weeks after that,
I get this phone call from Bill.
- I think at that time,
Scotty had been out on the road,
I hadn't seen him for a while,
and I had no idea that he went to these friends up in--
around Geneva, where he was from.
- It's a pain that never goes away.
[crying]
- He was a kid. He was 25 when he died.
He was a great guy. I loved him.
He was one of my best friends.
- Memories, and tears, and, you know, some--
one of those kind of things
that you don't forget forever.
You know, you just don't forget it forever.
That's the love of my life.
- I loved Bill, man, and I loved Scott,
and we got along great.
It was a wonderful time.
- I mean, I just can't comprehend death.
I just can't comprehend it.
As far as I'm concerned, he's alive.
He's not here at this moment. That's all.
But I can't comprehend death.
[slow jazz piano]
- Bill was out of it.
Scotty was gonna be someone
he would probably miss the rest of his life.
- He didn't want to play for a while. He was really down.
So was I, man.
- Bill was floundering without management,
and I found him a manager, Helen Keane.
- My mom was totally centered on Bill.
There was just this...
this flow between them, this--this connection.
- Helen, she was very strong, and very good for Bill.
He'd have been dead without her.
I don't think Bill would have had the career he did
without her.
[rapid jazz piano]
- So when it was time to start playing again,
Bill got Chuck Israels.
So Chuck started playing with us.
- And we went to New York and worked at the Hickory House
and then jobs at the Vanguard.
This was the real deal for me.
This was where I wanted to be, and there I was.
[upbeat jazz music]
- And that's when he got Larry Bunker,
and then they went to Europe
for the first time after that.
- One of the most wonderfully integrated units
in the history of jazz, the Bill Evans Trio.
- In Europe, Bill could walk into a concert hall with,
you know, 5,000 people,
and you could hear a pin drop.
- "My Foolish Heart."
The way that he would do the voicings
was such a complete marriage
of harmony and counterpoint.
Really authentic,
very inspirational.
Wow.
- Bill was playing so beautiful.
He had such a knowledge of what to do.
Every modern piano player
wants to arrive at the concept
that Bill Evans did with the piano.
[applause]
- He was on the road a lot,
but he did visit Baton Rouge.
When he'd come visit us, you know,
it was the two of them having conversations
either at the piano...
- Something like this for instance, maybe.
[jazz piano tune]
- Bill just adored the fact that Harry was a great teacher.
Harry became the first music supervisor
in Baton Rouge.
- A schoolteacher in the day,
and then at night,
almost every weekend playing jazz.
- I'll never forget that visit when you came down
to my home in Louisiana, and I said,
"Bill, show me those changes in harmonics, you know?"
- "No, Har, I'm not gonna deprive you
of the opportunity to discover it yourself."
- That's--you're hitting home.
- It was two jazz brothers
talking to each other about jazz.
- But there were gaps,
sometimes several years where we didn't see him.
- There were periods--
up and down periods in his life.
You know, he was always fighting that demon.
- In Bill's hotel room,
Bill and Ellaine shooting up before the gig.
Cooking some stuff in a bottle cap,
pulling it in through a hypodermic needle.
Come on, man!
- In 1963, Harry went to Bill's apartment,
and Harry pulled up his sleeve,
and there were just needle marks all over.
And Harry was obsessed to try to save his brother.
Love, unconditional love.
- Eddie was able to bring something else to the table.
Eddie could play, you know?
[laughing]
- I had seven wonderful years.
It was a very special period in my life.
[jazz music]
We worked maybe 45 weeks a year.
Top of the Gate--that was kind of our home base gig.
And then we'd fly to Europe
and do three, four weeks in Europe.
Maybe go out to the West Coast for a couple of weeks.
Maybe go to South America or maybe Canada.
Bill was, like, a father figure as well as a musical mentor,
and very nurturing.
I feel really blessed
to have spent that time with Bill and have him--
that kind of relationship.
- "Conversations With Myself" was a spectacular session.
When he would play the Vanguard, I was there every night.
We became fast friends.
- First time I met Bill,
he invited me down to the Vanguard,
and he wrote out a couple tunes for me
right in the break.
That's how kind he was to a guy he'd just met,
and I thought that was
the real, genuine article.
- Bill was introverted, quiet, funny,
and those pictures of him crouched over the piano
are a pretty accurate portrait of his personality.
[lively piano music]
- Bill asked me about doing a duet recording with him.
It was as if he were in part of my brain.
His sense of texture was just amazing.
- Bill's touch--it's the sound he made at the piano.
The ability to...
[soft jazz tune]
Just a complete command
of the tonal colors on the piano,
you know, like a great concert pianist.
The harmonic choices,
the way that the melody is singing,
it all came out very uniquely Bill Evans.
- He had that basic classical training to begin with
that solidified his approach
to how to play the piano.
- Getting the sound out of the instrument
with his fingers,
and not anything else.
- I guess everything that Bill did was informed by the fact
that Bill was a composer.
[Bill Evans' "Waltz for Debby"]
- Bill loved Debby, you know,
and when she was three, he wrote that tune,
you know, "Waltz for Debby."
- Being at the beach with him, going swimming,
those were, like, happy, happy times.
He always played it.
You know, it was like, you're here in my heart.
You're here in my heart.
- There was a side of Bill that always yearned for family.
- Bill had a unique voice.
His compositions should rate with those of Chopin.
It's the harmonies.
"Turn Out The Stars"--that was written after his father died.
[jazz piano music]
Chopin wrote strictly for the piano.
I think Bill wrote strictly for the piano.
- That little notebook is, like, really fascinating,
'cause he always had two or three of those in his pocket.
You know, you'd be on the subway
or in a restaurant, and all of a sudden,
he'd whip out a notebook and start writing stuff.
This is "Walkin' Up." I used to love that.
[lively jazz piano]
That's it.
That's a tricky ending.
- In 1970,
Bill was at Kennedy Airport with his trio.
They patted him down,
and they found the syringe, and that was it.
They went into the suitcases,
and they found a huge stash of heroin.
Bill told me that at that time,
he was shooting up every 45 minutes.
Bill went on methadone,
which he kept up for a number of years,
and he looked great.
- Bill kind of went through the classic midlife crisis.
You know, he grew a beard, and he--
and, you know, he got into clothes.
- He always used to like to wear those flashy sport jackets.
Looked like somebody from Hawaii,
you know, a tourist.
- Bill Evans comes out here,
and they were at the Playboy Club.
Standing next to me for at least 20 minutes was Bill Evans,
but I didn't recognize him.
- He lived in the Bronx.
He lived with his first wife
really--or common-law wife, Ellaine.
- Ellaine, she was a sweetheart, really.
She was totally devoted to Bill.
- She was with him all the way through the times
when things were really, really bad,
and they were literally on the streets.
- I felt a lot of warmth and love toward her.
You know, my whole family did.
They knew she was an addict. They didn't care.
They loved her.
He wanted a child,
and he couldn't have a child with Ellaine.
And then he got hooked up with Nenette.
- Working at Concerts by the Sea,
Redondo Beach, he met her there.
She was a waitress there in the club.
Bill just, you know, he flipped over Nenette.
You know, he took her back to New York,
and went and told Ellaine that, you know--
she had no idea what was happening.
So this came as a complete shock to her.
- And I called her when I found out
he was going to leave, you know, and said,
"Come stay with us in Baton Rouge for a while,"
but she didn't.
- I just don't think she could envision a life without him.
[brake screeches]
[horn blaring]
- I was at work, and I get a call from Bill,
and he said, "Ellaine is dead.
She threw herself in front of a subway."
- Oh.
All of us, yeah. I was just heartbroken.
- I remember going to the funeral.
Bill was driving.
You know, Bill took it really hard.
[soft jazz piano]
I think it was maybe a couple of months later,
and here, you know, my next trip down to New York,
I'm going to Bill's wedding, you know?
- They got married in a big hotel in New York.
- He was 43, and she was 27.
- She did provide
what he had wanted so badly:
a beautiful, healthy child named Evan Evans.
- They had the house in New Jersey,
I think, just about that time.
That was a good period in his life.
I mean, really happy.
About as happy as I'd ever seen him.
- Here's a woman who gave him a marriage,
who gave him a son.
Who gave him a stepdaughter, Maxine,
wonderful girl who loved Bill
and whom Bill treated as his daughter.
I think Nenette gave Bill another--
almost another ten years of life.
[jazz piano music]
- The musicians' world,
everybody knew about Bill Evans.
I mean, I had such respect, it was just--
it felt like I was recording with the symphony.
[singing] The night
Is like a lovely tune
Beware, my foolish heart
And Bill said, keep all the groupies away
from the record date.
Just you and I come in,
you know, and Helen.
[singing] Take care, my foolish heart
What was fascinating to me was just to listen
to how he constructed the performances of each song.
It was the greatest music lesson I ever got.
[Bill Evans' "A Child Is Born"]
[singing] One small heart
One pair of eyes
One work of art
Here in my arms
I've recorded since 1950
with so many different great musicians and orchestras.
It was really the best involvement
I ever had with a musician.
- I was literally jumping off the floor in my hotel room.
I couldn't believe it.
I called up my dad, who's in California.
"Dad, guess what?"
You know, "I got this gig with Bill Evans," you know?
- Marc Johnson was 24,
and I was 30 when we joined Bill.
- Bill told me, the trio with Marc and Joe--
he had the same feeling with that trio
that he had with Scott and Paul.
[jazz bass music]
- Bill loved Marc. He loved him like a son.
You know, I think he saw a lot of Scott LaFaro in Marc.
There was a spirit there that Bill recognized
and really, really enjoyed.
[lively jazz music]
- I saw he was playing at the Vanguard.
I wanted to say hello,
so I went in the dressing room
and I said, "How you doing?"
He said, "Well, you're a friend,"
and he said, "I want to-- I want to tell you
before you're gonna hear this from other people."
But he said, "I'm using drugs again."
And he said, "Nenette found out, and she threw me out."
She was finding the syringes.
Here she is with little kids in the house.
And that was when the marriage really fell apart.
- Like many virtuoso pianists,
Bill had a selfishness.
He was a very selfish,
dedicated-to-himself kind of guy.
And Bill got very involved with people.
He got too involved with them,
and I think he hurt a hell of a lot of people.
- Bill absolutely adored Harry.
I didn't notice his getting sick until somebody said,
"Pat, I think something's wrong with Harry.
He's talking to himself at the piano."
- My father was diagnosed schizophrenic.
- He was on medication.
Finally I had to have him hospitalized.
- It was quite a shock going from music supervisor
to the state hospital.
Bill footed the bill to get the best treatment possible.
It was sad. He suffered terribly.
- I went to work, and I said,
"I better go check on him."
He'd gone out and got a gun and shot himself.
- We were on the bandstand,
and all of a sudden, the sound stops from the piano.
Waited, I gave it a pregnant pause,
and I looked up, and he's, like, standing up,
backing away from the piano with tears coming down his face.
He says, "I can't. I can't go on.
He was--he was too much a part of the music."
And he had learned that day that Harry had committed suicide.
- Harry represented to him
his reason for being in music.
I mean, it was his older brother,
and he loved him and respected him.
And so this was a tremendous loss for Bill.
- Harry had just committed suicide,
and Bill wrote to me from the plane
on his way back from the funeral.
I met Bill at a club in Edmonton
five days after my 22nd birthday.
I just remember him standing at the doorway,
and then he leaned down, and he kissed my cheek,
and I'd never had a man do that.
I decide to go to New York and see Bill,
and then he just, like, took me right into his bedroom,
sat me down on the bed,
and it was a very intimate moment
of just getting to know someone
that you know is gonna have
a really big impact on your life.
[jazz piano music]
He was sitting at the piano, working on some stuff,
and he handed me this chart, and it had my name on it,
and he's like, "Well, I wrote your song.
It just kind of came out fully formed."
It's his way of connecting me to him.
He was writing tunes all the time,
and then he was working with that trio
that was his dream trio.
[jazz music]
- That fall, the trio really hit a peak,
the fall of '79.
He recorded in Paris.
That recording is probably the pinnacle of that trio.
- A couple of the recordings
are some of the last recordings that Bill did.
Sounded great to me, man, and I thought that--gee, I said,
"Bill's just playing his ass off again, man."
It seemed like he knew he was dying.
He knew he was gonna die.
- You know the tragedies in his life, obviously,
with Ellaine and then his brother Harry
and this, you know, his failed marriage.
I think he just kind of gave up on a certain level.
He just didn't-- he'd still play great.
He was still there for the music.
In fact, it seemed like he was living for that alone.
He was living for the music alone.
- I really believe that he wanted to kill himself.
That's what I believe.
- Every day was life and death.
Every day was Russian roulette.
He was probably shooting close to an ounce of cocaine a week.
- He said, "I don't know why I should stay alive."
And I said, "Well, what about your son?"
I said, "You got a little boy.
"What's gonna happen to him?
He's gonna grow up without a father?"
And Bill said, "Yeah."
He said, "Evan."
He said, "That's right, I could do it for Evan."
He said, "Thanks, thanks, man."
That was pretty much the last time I saw him.
- As things progressed through August,
he had moved into a very dark, dark place.
You can hear that in the music.
- Bill's physical exterior was pretty much falling apart,
but the power of his music
was still completely intact,
right to the bitter end.
- The last time I saw Bill,
I was doing the "Merv Griffin Show" in Los Angeles,
and he was on.
- One of the most influential piano soloists
in the jazz world today, the great Bill Evans, Bill?
[applause]
- I thought he looked terrible, and I asked him,
"Do you feel all right?"
And, you know, he kind of gave me a vague answer.
- I would like to do this, which I think
is a little more serious maybe for your audience.
It's just a rubato, and I won't improvise,
just play two choruses of medley.
It's now called "Your Story."
- It was a really peaceful day.
We drove into Manhattan.
Bill had actually made an appointment.
He wanted to get set up at a new methadone clinic.
- I remember sitting in the car,
and Bill laid down in the back seat.
Laurie was sitting up front with me.
- As he looked out into the street,
we had a few jokes.
We were having a few light moments,
and then pretty soon, like, there's, like,
a steady stream of blood coming from his mouth.
- Bill started to hemorrhage, and it was bad.
And I'm driving like a maniac,
and I'm blaring out the horn, and people are stopping,
and we cut through.
We pull into the emergency room.
I pick Bill up and carry him into the emergency room.
I called Helen, and I called Marc,
and they came right over,
and the four of us were actually together in a room
when the doctor came in and told us
that Bill didn't make it.
- It's a devastating moment, man.
[stammering]
It's the first person close to me
that I'd ever...lost.
- I felt really relieved and happy because--
oh, 'cause I knew his struggle was over.
[somber piano music]
- When I go to Baton Rouge, they're both under an oak tree.
Sometimes I feel like Bill almost calls out.
I don't know why.
[lively jazz piano]
- Finally, we live with what Bill left behind,
which is all these wonderful recordings.
- Playing with Bill and Scott at that time, it was original.
I was just real-- you know, it was good.
[laughing]
- And when I think of Bill, I always just think about,
you know, beauty, you know.
It's beautiful, you know?
- That's what made Bill so special, you know,
'cause he was just so--
it's an outpouring of his heart.
- This incredible poignancy, you know?
To my knowledge, nobody is making music like this.
- His courage to go deeply within himself
makes the music touch everybody in such a large way.
- Bill Evans, Monk, Art Tatum, same kind of thing.
They dared to be different.
- Just before he died, I got a call from him.
He said, "Just go with truth and beauty,
and forget the rest."
And ever since then, that's been the premise of my life.
- The influence that he had on jazz is--
go on for another hundred years.
There was a uniqueness in him
that will transcend all time.
[applause]